When someone asks you "What do you feel about chocolates, the political condition of your country"? You will definitely come up with an answer as you cannot feel absolute neutral about these.
Each one of us are constantly evaluating our world around and every stimulus present around us. So, to define Attitude it can be said that - 'Attitude is the process of forming judgements about objects, ideas or people'.
"An attitude denotes an adjustment of the individual towards some selected person, a group or an institution". (Kuppuswamy)
The Attitude posses three vital components:
a) Cognitive Component: The thoughts and beliefs which are formed about any social stimulus.
b) Affective Component: The emotion or the feeling aspects attached to the social stimulus.
c) Behavioral / Conative Component: The tendency to respond or to enact in accordance with the social stimulus.
These 3 components are often put together to form the A-B-C model of Attitude.
How Attitude and Behavior is Related?
The interrelatedness between these two factors are not quite lucid. They share a complex form of linkage - which changes in respect of the stimulus, situation and other variables.
→ When Attitude - Behavior goes hand-in-hand?
Firstly, when we hold a strong attitude about any particular stimulus we tend to behave exactly in accordance with it.
Secondly, times when the individual is aware about his/her own set of beliefs.
Thirdly, times when there is no external or group pressure for behaving in a certain fashion.
Fourthly, he/she is not being observed by others.
Lastly, when he/she expects to have a positive consequence from that particular act.
Here, comes the concept of Predicting Spontaneous Behavior where the response of a person can be successfully predicted in a situation where he/she needs to act spontaneously. The Attitude Accessibility is the key which helps us in the guess work. The intensity of the association between an attitude object and a person's judgement of the same, when measured by the speed with which they claim how they are affected by it. This access to one's attitude or knowing the intensity of the association helps us in predicting the behavior.
The next is Predicting Deliberative Behavior, where the planned actions are guessed. The explanation behind this is easy, the thoughtful actions are often intention specific. So, if the inner thoughts or objectives of a person is known, their actions can also be predicted as well.
→ When Attitude - Behavior are inconsistent?
Sometimes what we say and what we do are dissimilar. For example, we may hate our Boss, say negative things about them to others; but when they are in front of us we show respect and behave cordially.
We often hold a generalized attitude about something, for example; any out-group, other religion; but does not let that reflect in our actions.
Few times our attitude and behavior are at a conflicting state. When we perceive a sense of distress or uneasiness as our thoughts and beliefs are not at par with our actions; we experience Cognitive Dissonance.
REFERENCES:
Kuppuswamy, B. (1961). An introduction to social psychology. Asia publishing house.
Quinton, S. (2015). Saundra K. Ciccarelli and J. Noland White, Psychology (/Global Edition).
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